I’m still so mad about this. I had a nurse who kept putting her hand on my perineum to “stretch” it during contractions. I kept asking her to stop. She said she “had” to do it, but it was hurting and causing me to recoil away from her, which was really not helpful for pushing. I’m still so mad that I didn’t make a…

This this this! What’s especially awful is when you start to really think about how he treated Neville. He went out of his way to be brutal to Neville and I will forever maintain that it’s because dear Voldy decided that Harry was the bigger threat. He’s punishing a child for not being targeted for murder.

I once had the opportunity to meet Mr. Rickman (may he rest in peace) in a professional capacity and was totally given this impression.

In 2006, when I was taking a classical acting course in the UK, Rickman came to briefly speak to my class about his experience becoming a successful actor in the “classical tradition,”…

I haven’t read the books, but I can’t imagine how Roth would be better than Rickman as this character. Roth is great, but Rickman is so much more. If he became too slapstick, I can only think Roth would have leaned into that and made it more so.

I’m not one to get all ready-eyed and sad about celebrities passing... but Alan Rickman and Carrie Fisher totally destroyed me. I’ve lost relatives whose deaths mattered less to me than those two.

I would like to sign up for your “A Literary Critique of the Characters of Harry Potter” newsletter, please.

That definitely sounds like something that might be glossed over for the sake of “teen audience appeal,” considering how eager fans were to embrace Snape as a Good Guy. Speaking of which, he had more than a little bit of Nice Guy Syndrome going on, eh? Ironically, of course, since he wasn’t ever actually “nice,” but…

I agree with your interpretation, although in the book we get his backstory at the same times that we do in the movies. However, the movies are kinder to Snape than the books, because they never show how into the Dark Arts he was, or how quick he was to call Lily a mudblood.

The movie version of Half-Blood Prince is trash. Rickman played the title character but the film never shows why this is important.

That scene where Emma Thompson goes to her room to compose herself is the most well-acted, heartbreaking scene in the entire movie.

He totally was one of the best parts in the whole of Harry Potter. Before the last book had even come out, I knew that Snape would have to be good in the end because there was no way Alan Rickman would let us down like that.

God, SO MANY THINGS that I wish would have been in the movie:

I feel all of this so hard. I read them starting when I was around 7, right after Chamber of Secrets came out, and was 17 when the seventh book came out. My sister and I would race through them— we were each given our own copy of every book as a special treat (and because that way we wouldn’t fight and would be dead…

This resonates so much with me! I also pretty much matched the books age for age and would attend the midnight parties (I was first in line 3 years in a row—in retrospect, those B&N employees probably hated me lol). And as soon as I left B&N, I would read the whole way home and all through the night.

Yep, Krum calling her Hermy-own felt like JK was calling out 11 year old me directly.

I want to live in a world where childhood rebellion involves reading.

Harry Potter was such an important part of my life. I feel incredibly lucky to be part of my generation. I was always around Harry’s age when each one came out, and they grew perfectly with me. I remember waiting in line for midnight releases, then staying up all night and then some, racing my friends to the finish…

I had a few friends who weren’t allowed to read the books because of their Christian parents. The parents believed that the books promoted satanic worship because it was about wizardry and “black magic”.

Here’s my possibly controversial opinion about the books: Hermione ending up with Ron was a TRAVESTY.

This is a photo of a Hanukkah present that one of my old bosses gave me. He and I talked about HP all the time, and he said that he thought this looked like a Horcrux, and obviously even though I’m a Hufflepuff, I need one of those.